Syrian Peace Talks Open Without Key Players

Representatives of 40 nations have converged on Montreux in a bid to drive home the urgency of talks in Switzerland on bringing peace to Syria.

But key players have been banned, uninvited or ignored as the international community has put principal above realpolitik.

The talking shop, which starts here and moves on to Geneva, is not entirely hopeless.

Syria's government has sent a high level delegation led by Foreign Minister Walid al Moualem.

His team of 15 may yet meet across a table from representatives of the rebel Syrian National Coalition, led by Ahmed Jarba.

That in itself would be a step forward. Perhaps they could, as Russia has suggested, open humanitarian corridors to relieve some of the suffering three years of civil war has visited on the civilian population.

More than nine million people are in dire need of aid.

But without the presence of all of the major belligerents and their backers, it is hard to see how Geneva II can yield anything more.

Mr Muallem (left) and Mr Jarba arrive for the conference

Iran, invited on Sunday, uninvited on Monday at the insistence of the Syrian opposition, is critical.

Tehran controls Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia which joined the fight on the side of Bashar al Assad.

Advisers and experts from Iran's al Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards have stemmed a tide of rebellion that had gone against Mr Assad until six months ago.

Tehran is engaged in its own diplomatic offensive. It has agreed to wind down its nuclear weapons programme in return for an easing of economic sanctions.

It is conceivable it might want to further improve its relation by putting pressure on Mr Assad to rein in at least his worst excesses.

It is certain that without the permission and the support of Iran, Mr Assad could not deviate from the course that he is currently set upon - an attempt at military victory.

On the rebel side the powerful Islamic Front has been left off the guest list. It is estimated to be able to muster 60,000 troops.

Rebel fighters and civilians inspect a bomb crater in Aleppo

The al Nusra Front is also not invited.

The rebels' Western backers have labelled it an al Qaeda affiliate and therefore a terrorist organisation.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham is an outright part if al Qaeda and is also banned.

Peace talks and the agreements they are supposed to produce can only be conducted between groups who are at war.

So leaving the extremists out of the process makes very little sense.

But then there is the question recently raised by several intelligence agencies: if the al Qaeda groups were to attend talks, which side of the table would they sit on?

The spooks hint that al Qaeda has done deals with the Assad regime.

They suggest that the radical Sunni international terrorist movement, which is dedicated to establishing an Islamic caliphate across the Middle East, has been serving Mr Assad, a member if an apostate Shia sect.

John Kerry, Ban Ki-Moon and Sergey Lavrov in Montreux

Far fetched? Perhaps. But they have split the rebel ranks. The al Qaeda groups' persecution and murder of senior rebel leaders, and refusal to integrate, meant they were attacked two weeks ago, and remain locked in battle with other rebel groups.

Only Mr Assad has gained from this.

At least one major al Qaeda operative once based in Tehran, where the Shia government keeps close tabs on Osama bin Laden's ideological heirs, has found his way into Syria.

Intelligence officers monitoring him ask how he managed to get into Syria without the permission of the Iranians?

Yes. It is complicated. Syria is a mess in which allies prove to be enemies, enemies can make temporary friends. It is a nightmare.

Perhaps the only way to make some sense of it all is to gather the belligerents and their backers in one place, to call their bluff. But that's not happening in Geneva.

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